


to fight out our thinking lives

by scullyitsme



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, MSR, Photo prompt, maybe slight spoilers for season eight if you squint, of course mulder reads william james, of course scully would have those sunglasses, tumblr drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 14:14:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10810674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyitsme/pseuds/scullyitsme
Summary: Just as he turns to follow her, the crime scene photog pops up again and hands him the Polaroid, saying, “I was tempted to keep it because I never get to photograph the living, but something tells me you two aren’t exactly in the habit of capturing joy, either.”Mulder takes the photo, glances at it.“Catching it isn’t the problem — keeping it is,” he says as it pockets it.





	to fight out our thinking lives

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a photo post on tumblr with commentary and somehow morphed into this drabble I'm sorry I don't know haha. The original post is here: http://scullyitsme.tumblr.com/post/160267381907/whenever-i-see-this-pic-i-like-to-pretend-that-it

The [photograph](http://scullyitsme.tumblr.com/post/160267381907/whenever-i-see-this-pic-i-like-to-pretend-that-it) was taken by some random, small-town crime scene photographer who was testing out a new Polaroid camera just as Mulder and Scully blew into town. They happened across the scene on their way somewhere else, so Mulder’s still travel-casual while Scully is her regular luminously coifed self. 

She tromps off to talk to the local PD and Mulder hangs back, observing. Turns out it’s nothing they have to get involved in. Scully nods to him and they head back to their rental car. 

Just as he turns to follow her, the crime scene photog pops up again and hands him the Polaroid, saying, “I was tempted to keep it because I never get to photograph the living, but something tells me you two aren’t exactly in the habit of capturing joy, either.” 

Mulder takes the photo, glances at it. 

“Catching it isn’t the problem — keeping it is,” he says as he pockets it. 

He keeps it for years and years, pulls it out from time to time but is mostly just comforted — if not made slightly sheepish — by its presence. In a desk drawer, between the pages of a book on his coffee table he’s been trying to read “for leisure” since 1995. 

That’s where Scully finds it, actually: it’s the middle of the night and he hasn’t been in his apartment, in Alexandria, in her life — in the world? — for weeks. The book in her hand feels unreasonably heavy, like a tether. She checks the spine — _[The Will To Believe](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Feduc.jmu.edu%2F%7Eomearawm%2Fph101willtobelieve.html&t=MWE2NDM3MTgyMzg0YjRkZjA2NjY0ZTJlM2Q5MWZjM2VkZWIxMDkyMCxmY3l2N3ljZQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AU9W3Ha073X0CSJpmDNAGxw&p=http%3A%2F%2Fscullyitsme.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F160267381907%2Fwhenever-i-see-this-pic-i-like-to-pretend-that-it&m=1) _ by William James. Psychology and philosophy. 

She smirks – _of course._

The tome seems to fall open in her lap of its own volition. She doesn’t register the faded Polaroid at first; no, at first she sees the line that has been underlined in ink so black it looks freshly wet. 

> _We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives._

Only then does she see the picture, and for a moment she considers taking it but she doesn’t. She puts it back in the book, right where she found it, so that it will be there when he comes back. Because he will come back to her, and she believes that. 

Years later, the book has found a proper home on a bookshelf, nestled between some of his books and some of hers. As she’s scanning the entangled spines, looking for something else, her eyes settle on to it with a kind of recognition she can’t rationalize at first. Then, she smiles. 

She tugs it out, soft with dust and age, and it opens with a soft sigh. She frowns as she flips through the pages; the photo is not there. Perhaps she imagined it, she thinks. She returns to the book and leaves the room, having forgotten what she’d been looking for originally. Whatever else she’d expected to find, but didn’t.

That night as he snores next to her in bed, she laces her fingers through his and stares out the window at the night sky. Joy, she thinks, is no so hard to find but it has been, at times, terribly hard to keep. The truth so rarely found was the easiest thing to hold onto because so often, it was something no one else wanted. Something that they made a home for, often at the expense of their safety, of their joy, of themselves. They were a safe harbor for fugitive truths and imponderable mysteries, for well-meaning misfits and mortal monsters. 

“You awake?” 

She turns to him in the dark, toward his mumbling sleepy voice.

“Just a little,” she whispers, “Go back to sleep.” 

He pulls her close, settling his chin against her shoulder, his cheek nestled against the warm nook of her neck. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, and she dreams of the photograph vividly; in more vibrant color than the faded Polaroid she is certain she once held in her hand.

In the morning, she will wake him with her half-asleep laugh as she remembers that the sunglasses he’d been wearing were hers. 


End file.
